Kimberly Chou, the media coordinator for the Dream Cafe, refers to the culinary center pop-up as a space that was created with the intention of making “the food that is served at the AMC, that people gather around, that people share, that we make and eat together, as intentional as everything else at the AMC.”

When the Detroit Narrative Agency (DNA) issued a call for project proposals, they were seeking film projects that shift narratives about Detroit, particularly projects led by those most often excluded from critical conversations about the city: Black and Brown Detroiters. Two years later, five DNA projects are in production and slated to present work-in-progress screenings at the 20th Annual Allied Media Conference in June.

When Puerto Rican Sofía Gallisá Muriente met Teresa Basilio, a Nuyorican from New York, at the 2016 Allied Media Conference in Detroit, they were both struck by the parallels between the island of their heritage and the city they were both visiting for the first time.